Deadly Dozen: Pacific TheaterReview

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When first you don't succeed, try, try again. Just make sure you improve a whole bunch of stuff along the way.

By Ivan Sulic

Few games were as frustrating to review as Deadly Dozen. Regardless of what approach was attempted, nFusion's Nazis in its third and first-person shooting take on World War II would peg you and your three deadly buddies with startling precision. Call it the blessed foresight of the "Master Race." Call it the heightened awareness of a battle hardened German army. Call it sloppy AI. Whatever, it was unfair. So unfair in fact that the game quickly degenerated into a painful and tedious exercise in elementary trial and error. I got shot from the fog, shot from the bush, shot from that nook a mile away in a building hidden behind the fog and the bush. It was quite terrible and needlessly difficult to best. Mix in the completely disrespectful omission of any and all multiplayer and drop in the typical gaming downfall of brevity and the result was a budget title that tried hard but accomplished little.

Seize Deadly Dozen's core in your clammy hands. Pull the world at war right out it and spin that beating globe of the mid twentieth century so that the South Pacific is in plain site. Land the American army there. Take the magically endowed spectacles the Nazis had away from this entirely different Japanese threat. And, throw in a multiplayer mode. Could it be greatness? When the gripes of the original are all but gone in the sequel, shouldn't what's left be utter bliss? Theoretically. But as is usually the case, what's excellent on paper isn't necessarily perfection in practice.

Let's take the fight to the Japanese. War buffs have been craving an action title set in the Pacific Theater for some time. Battlefield took us there admirably, but that game sorely lacked the cohesive singleplayer experience to keep fans enthralled in the era. Ultimately that stellar multiplayer-centric title amounts to red vs. blue gaming. What we have been and still are hoping for is a proper Medal of Honor delivered under the baking sun of the Philippines. Since Spearhead all but devastated that hope for the short-term, solace must be sought in Deadly Dozen: Pacific Theater (sometimes also referred to as Deadly Dozen 2, depending on where looked).

Unfortunately, this game suffers from the same "disjointed assortment of missions" syndrome that afflicts many other wartime, history-based, or militaristic action titles (think Delta Force, Comanche, Medal of Honor, and Battlefield). Even though at any given moment players are charged with leading and being four from of a pool of twelve rough and tumble Dogfaces, Leathernecks and Swab-Jockeys, they never really assume or care about the personality of one or any of them. Live or die, they're all cannon fodder.

This is no Band of Brothers. There is no evolving story, no personality, no care for one individual over another. The very strict "beat this and then undertake that" attitude is off and unwanted. Where passable in other titles, here it is not. Pacific Theater's band of lowlifes gone patriots, like Lee Marvin's own crew before them, beg for further development. But that is a fleeting qualm, as the 12 missions undertaken are clever and varied enough in premise to do away with whatever lacking development there is.

Delivery is where it truly hurts. Even though the AI in this new iteration is far more forgiving than before, the game devolves quickly to a tried but not true approach to action. However sparsely populated and unbecoming of World War II, the universe of DD nevertheless necessitates very, very slow movement, lots of sniping, and even more laying down. Approaching every single problem the same exact way for all 12 of the titles missions bores. Even though the objectives and locales differ (beach landing at Tarawa, urban rubble of the Philippines, snow of Alaska) the gameplay is never frantic or up close and personal enough to be exhilarating. It's a tiring trek through a jungle, livened up only by the occasional, superfluous vehicle (sometimes even hard to control, as is the case with the oddly pivoting turret of the tank).

No scale. There is simply no sense of war. Had I not been told beforehand, I would have suspected this to be a revision of some Chuck Norris movie where the karate master with his own fitness system had to infiltrate and kill folk all by his lonesome. Aside from a few scripted events and the Furious Four (since four of the Deadly Dozen are only controllable at any given time), the game is just you vs. them. Admittedly, your small squad lends to a more covert style of play, but battles could have been larger. War could have been raging.

Even further hampering the underlying concept of the title is the fact that you're prohibited, by punishment of death and reload, to ever get close to anyone. Bad guys here are not as frighteningly accurate as they once were, sure, we've established that already, but one hit from a machinegun still means several hits from a machinegun, which still means death. The Japanese also like to charge, a lot. Insistent on advancing, they'll always, always, always try and narrow the gap between you and them, outnumbered or not, which is never a good thing. And, even though the shrubbery is there in glorious abundance, once you're seen, you can't practically be unseen. The other three on team America point out baddies by brutally murdering them and hit indicators, enemy indicators, and a slightly polished positional audio system help spotting the legions of Japan's best a bit easier, but the brush will help conceal them more than it will you. What to do? Snipe and crouch walk, all the damn time.

Despite being underdeveloped, the setting manages to still in some way save face. Skulking through the dense underbrush of a steamy and still barbeque mist ridden locale (now more appropriately so than before), all the while firing off eloquent bursts of small gunfire can be a real hoot, one that with a few tweaks would be consistently delightful, if not for the fact that atop all other problems, gamers are constantly having to cater to the needs of untrained comrades.